The Case for Atlanta- America's Team...in the '90's

Did the 'ol type an entire post and then close out the windows on my computer before hitting "Send."  Yup...So I'll try again.

I started collecting baseball cards in 1991.  Fleer was my first pack.  Yellow cards, simple, yet right away the greatest possesion of my life.  I love seeing those yellow Fleer cards from that year.  Signifies everything that is baseball to me.  Opening a pack, looking at stats on the back of the card.  Reading the tiny two line bios on the players.  Hoping, wishing, dreaming that I'll get an insert in the pack.  Which back then an "insert" was just a cartoonish picture of the guys in black though.  Either way, finding one of those in a pack was like finding a $20 bill in your laundry as an adult.  Pure bliss. 

1991 meant a lot of things for baseball.  The Pittsburgh Pirates won 98 games behind Jim Leyland's team of Barry "Skinny Girl" Bonds, Andy Van Slyke, Bobby Bonilla, Orlando Merced, Jay Bell, Jeff King, Doug Drabek, Zane Smith and John Smiley's 20 Wins.  Remember those guys?  They were a force to be reckoned with the next year too but they were not the only team to start winning.

The Atlanta Braves were dead last in the NL West (yes...the NL West) in 1990.  They went on to win 94 games and beat the Dodgers to be the first team since 1890 to go from last to first the following year.  The 1991 Twins did it the same year oddly enough.  Puckett...Game 6.  Superhero.  Jack Morris=Great American Stud.

1991 was the beginning of a Dynasty for the Braves.  We were "forced" to watch them on TV because they were owned by Ted Turner who in turn owned TBS.  They were ALWAYS on like the Cubs on WGN or Yankees on YES or Red Sox on NESN.  You just watched them because they were on.  Well...Noah and I didn't because we only had CBS, ABC, and NBC but that was only in the winter and well..never mind.  We grew up in Vermont.  Everyone else in America had TBS and watched the Braves.  It's a big reason there are so many Braves fans to this day just like there being so many Yankee fans.  That and winning.  And the Braves won a lot of games in the '90's.

Unfortunately they did not win a lot of playoff games or at least the really big ones in the World Series when it really counted.  They went on to win in 1995 over the stud Indians (Kenny Lofton, Omar Visquel, Manny Rameriz, Albert Belle, Eddie Murray, Jim Thome, Paul Sorrento, Tony Pena, Carlos Baerga ring any bells???  100 win season.  First WS appearance since 1954.)  but would not win again despite so many amazing seasons throughout the decade.  For those that need a refresher here's a little take on their players over the years...

Otis Nixon, Jeff Blauser, Terry Pendelton (MVP), Ron Gant, David Justice (married Halle Berry...), Fred "Crime Dog" McGriff, Javy Lopez, Chipper Jones, Mark Lemke, Marquis Grissom.  Just a few but maybe one more?  Sid Bream.  Who can forget the slide at the plate to beat his former team, the Pittsburgh Pirates in '92 Game 7 NLCS.  Amazing.  Still to this day the slowest man alive. 

The pitching though is what led this team to greatness.  Greg Maddux came on to the team in '92 and would go on to win 3 more Cy Youngs and four consecutively.  He joined Tom Glavine and John Smoltz and Steve Avery.  Later it would be Kevin Millwood and Denny Neagle filling in the last spot winning 15-20 games (Neagle won 20 games in '97 as the fourth starter...)  The Braves rotation pitched into the top 5 of nearly every pitching category every year.  Here's a little proof:

Dating back to 1990, the Braves rotations have produced five of the 10 best ERAs compiled by a club's starting pitchers during a specific season. They actually own the top three marks ('92, '97 and '98) within this span.
The 1995 bunch that celebrated Atlanta's lone World Series championship actually posted the highest ERA (3.25) among those five clubs.
Ironically, the best ERA compiled by an NL club's starters dating back to 1990 is the 2.98 mark posted by the '92 Braves, who were still a few months away from adding that Maddux guy to their quintet.
The 1992 Atlanta rotation was led by Glavine's second consecutive 20-win season and the 15-win campaigns posted by Smoltz and 35-year-old Charlie Leibrandt. The group's success was strengthened by the fact that Pete Smith managed to go 7-0 with a 2.10 ERA in 11 starts.
The 1998 Braves rotation combined for an NL-record 90 wins and posted a 3.06 ERA. Glavine (20-6, 2.47) won his second Cy Young Award while Maddux (18-9, 2.22) and Smoltz (17-3, 2.90) finished tied for fourth. Neagle's 16 wins ranked fifth, sitting just behind the 17 wins notched by Millwood.
As successful as the 1998 rotation was, there are some who will say the '97 Atlanta quintet, which posted a 3.05 ERA, might have actually been better. This group combined for 1,096 2/3 innings -- the most completed by any NL club dating back to '90, and third-most since '80.
Maddux ranked fourth on the '97 squad with 232 2/3 innings (a number that would have ranked third in the entire NL this past season) and Smoltz ranked fourth with his 3.02 ERA. Neagle went 20-5 with 2.97 ERA and still finished third in the NL Cy Young Award balloting behind winner Pedro Martinez and Maddux, who went 19-4 with a 2.20 ERA.
When the Braves returned to the World Series in 1999, they had a rotation that had posted a 3.67 ERA -- the highest mark compiled by their starters since the '90 season. Smoltz pitched with a torn ligament in his right elbow and both Glavine (14-11, 4.12) and Maddux (19-9, 3.57) encountered some rough patches.

This isn't even touching on the most magical part of baseball in all of the decade.

The Tomahawk Chop.

Nothing has matched it since and nothing probably ever will.  Watching those games with EVERY fan going absolutely nuts with the chop, the chant for every important and not important pitch made Brave's playoff games absolutely riviting, and mesmerizing.  The Braves came home to a team that supported them like no other and it was incredible to watch.  Sadly, I don't know that we'll ever get 50,000 Americans to pay attention to any one thing at the same time ever again to experience something like that. 

I'm sure some people will point to the Yankee's in the last half of the '90's as they were the ones that actually won World Series titles but let's face it, the best series the Yankees played was in 2001 which is a whole new decade therefore I'm not counting them.  The A's were a lot of fun to watch with the Bash Bro's and Dave Stewart staring people down before Eck came in to wash it up.  Twins were incredible with Puckett/Winfield/Morris stealing wins away from people.  Indians were super fun but for some reason I just never really got behind them. 

It also could be that I was a kid watching all these games.  Life was simpler.  Life was easy.  Life was baseball.  It was the day of baseball cards, wiffle ball bats off tennis balls, coming home at midnight to catch the Mariner's score and other West coast games, listening to Kay/Sterling on the radio while milking cows.  Life was different, not better, just different and watching the Braves all those years was some of the best baseball I remember seeing.  9 Straight Division Titles (would be 15 straight going into the 2000's).  You don't need WS Rings for that kind of dominance.  I'll leave you with this: